One of the most frequently touted words in the health and fitness industry is “diet”. With this, it’s common to hear “which diet are you on?” or “what’s the best diet?”. Now, we understand and appreciate that this is with good reason, as the word diet is used in reference to an individual’s nutritional intake. However, a potential issue with the word “diet” is that it often suggests an individual’s eating patterns will be short-lived in attempt to achieve a specific outcome. Therefore, this could infer that the diet is potentially difficult to adhere to, restrictive, unenjoyable, and socially threatening, which ultimately makes it unsustainable long-term.
With this, we advocate for a change in vocabulary, and suggest that rather than following a “diet” you instead choose to create, adopt, and follow a “dietary pattern”.
A dietary pattern can be defined as the quantity, variety, or combination of different foods and beverage in a diet and the frequency with which they are habitually consumed. Adopting a dietary pattern encourages long-term, sustainable, and healthful consumption of food from a variety of nutritious sources. Therefore, following a dietary pattern opposed to a diet can allow for less food/food group restriction, which in turn can contribute to developing a healthier relationship with food and improved physical health status. This infers that a dietary pattern should include an abundance of wholesome, nutritious foods from every food group, and certain products are only limited due to allergies, intolerances, medical purposes, ethical reasons, religion, or if you simply don’t enjoy the taste/texture.
Also, dietary pattern encourages you to eat from a similar selection of various food sources throughout your lifespan. Therefore, if your goal is to manipulate energy intake, a dietary pattern allows you to simply manipulate your portion sizes, rather than drastically changing your food sources.
Given this, we encourage that each individual adopts and follows their own unique dietary pattern which they genuinely enjoy and promotes good health, quality of life, social interaction, athletic performance, and aligns with their values and beliefs.